Happy Endings
by hell-whim
Summary: Lee and Kara meet again for the first time in two years. What happens next? AU


Title: Happy Endings

**Title:** Happy Endings

**Author:** freak-pudding

**Disclaimer:** _Battlestar Galactica_ and all associated articles are the property of Sci-Fi, Ron Moore, and David Eick. No copyright infringement intended.

**Summary:** Lee and Kara meet. What happens next?

**Author's Note:** Exercise in parody; based and cribbed off of Margaret Atwood's sublime short story "Happy Endings." Anyone with even an inkling of writing professionally ought to read it just once, here. Some lines taken directly from her story, some mine, most a mix between.

_Lee and Kara meet again for the first time in two years.  
What happens next?  
If you want a happy ending, try A._

A

Lee and Kara come to terms with their past and present. Lee makes up with his father, who retires to Picon and reconciles with his estranged wife. Lee and Kara fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and lucrative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually, they buy a house together in Delphi and settle down. They have two children, to whom they are wholly devoted. The children turn out well. Lee and Kara have a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations together. They get older; they retire. They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.

B

Lee falls in love with Kara but Kara doesn't fall in love with Lee. The Cylons attack. The world is destroyed. Kara uses Lee's body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid kind. Lee becomes CAG and they fall into a pattern. Every week Kara comes to Lee's bunk when he's working and she fraks him and after that she falls asleep. Lee doesn't; he gets up and cleans the room, sets out her uniform at the end of the bed, not wanting her to think he's untidy. He'll go back to his desk and back to his work and when Kara wakes up she puts on her underwear and her tanks and her pants and her socks and her boots, in the exact reverse order she took them off. She doesn't take off his clothes, he takes them off himself, he acts as if he's dying for it every time, not because he likes sex exactly (he doesn't), but he wants Kara to think he does because if they do it often enough surely she'll get used to him, she'll come to depend on him and she will love him, but Kara goes out the door with hardly so much as a good night and three days later she turns up again at 2100 and they do the whole thing over again.

Lee gets run down. He pulls double shifts, he flies longer and harder and gets reckless in his fights. He lashes out at subordinates. People begin to notice and talk. Friends try to help, but everyone's stretched thin and there's only so much to be saved. Inside Kara, he thinks, is another Kara, who is much better and loves him. He believes, because he has to, that this other Kara will emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon, a rose from a thorny bush, a pit from a prune, if only the first Kara is prodded enough.

One night Kara comes and when he says he loves her, she laughs in his face and leaves.

Kara goes back to Caprica and rescues a man named Sam Anders. It's not even Sam that finally gets to Lee: it's the rescue. Lee goes with because he thinks it's where he belongs, but they are ambushed and he is hit and Kara doesn't care at all. When they get back to Galactica the doctor tells Lee he'll never fly again. Kara does not come to see him. Lee finds a pistol in the pilot's lounge and goes to his bunk (you can tell what kind of man he is by the fact that it's not even his own pistol.) He leaves a note for Kara and waits until the middle of the day. He plans to miss and he hopes that she'll find him and get him to Life Station in time and repent and then they can get married, but his aim is too perfect and he blows off the back of his skull.

Kara marries Anders and everything continues as in A.

C

Lee and Kara fall in love. Time passes, and they fall out of love and back in love again. They don't talk about it. They dance circles around each other for years.

Eventually Lee turns thirty-two and becomes depressed. Kara sleeps with Lee only when she's not in love with him. She's in love with the ghost of a man called Samuel, who is thirty-two as well and not ready to settle down.

Lee on the contrary had really settled long ago: he hates it. He is married to a lovely woman called Anastasia and is moving up in rank fairly quickly. But Kara is unimpressed by this; she cares only for what she cannot possess, namely the dead men she sees in dreams.

One day Kara goes home and finds Samuel alive and when they come back Kara forgets all about Lee. Lee tries to forget about Kara, but he is in love with her again. He and his wife talk about children, and both have hobbies that they find stimulating and challenging, when they can find the time.

Kara marries Sam. She is not as lucky.

Lee tells Kara how important she is to him, but he can't leave his wife because a commitment is a commitment. Kara finds this boring and occupies her time with drinking and reckless stunts.

The Cylons tell Kara she is special. She thinks a lot about her childhood. She was raised by a woman who thought suffering made you stronger, so Kara suffered. Even now, she believes she deserves it.

Kara goes mad. She nosedives into the eye of a storm and her Viper explodes. Lee is still in love with her. He barely makes it out.

He dies a few weeks later in an unrelated accident, caused by a fuel leak in his Viper and an inattentive live-fire practice. Anastasia disappears.

Sam, after a suitable period of mourning, marries a very understanding woman named Tory, and all continues as in A, under different names.

D

Sam and Tory have no problems. They get along well. They have no children; they are devoted to jobs they find stimulating and challenging, he as a Raptor pilot and she as a presidential aide. The rest of the story is about their race against time as the fleet tries to find Earth. They do, and Sam and Tory are virtuous and grateful, and settle down. The rest continues as in A.

E

Yes, but Tory is terminally ill. The rest of the story is about how kind and understanding they both are until Tory dies. Then Sam devotes himself to carrying on her work until the end of A. If you like, it can be "Sam," "a Cylon," "guilty and confused," "executed," and "drinking."

F

If you think this is all too bourgeois, make Lee a riot-leading revolutionary and Kara a military sniper sent to kill him and see how far that gets you. Remember, all of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. You'll still end up with some version of A for some of the players, though in between you may get a sprawling saga of pain and penance and destiny, a chronicle of our epic times, sort of.

You'll have to face it: these endings are the same. The path was laid for them in the Scrolls of Pythia, and you cannot mask the destination, even if you take a few differing turns.

The only authentic ending is the one provided here:

_Lee and Kara die. Lee and Kara die. Lee and Kara die._


End file.
